


In Her Sister's Shadow

by norcumi



Series: Learning to Live [1]
Category: Spellstorm (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, GFY, Gen, Siblings, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/pseuds/norcumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Beyond The Gate event, The Mage has time to come to grips with returning home, and the family she left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Her Sister's Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> While part of the Beyond The Gate event is available in game, there is a convenient wiki transcription of what happened. [Part 1](http://spellstorm.wikia.com/wiki/Beyond_the_Gate_Part_I_transcript%20) and [part 2](http://spellstorm.wikia.com/wiki/Beyond_the_Gate_Part_II_transcript).

Archmage Emila led the way through the forest, her staff stabbing down deliberately every other pace as if to pin and grind that patch of ground into place. Given how the Etheral Magic had affected the world, the Mage trailing behind privately thought it might not be the worst idea in the world. Grim chattered on almost nervously, enticing the Archmage into conversation - mostly about Fang Shrimp, blast him, and best ways to cook them. As if a book knew how food tasted.

It was all one big, welcome distraction to the Mage. She gloomily watched the Archmage's staff pound, pound, pounding along, trying to ignore the flitting shadows of later afternoon sunlight washing through the leaves – or worse yet; old, familiar landmarks. The closer they got to Weatherly, the worse it got. For one, there were no distractions. Apparently even Weatherly's formidable forest life had been stunned, startled, or possibly even scared by the Manakros and had decided that hiding was the better part of valor. They saw distant figures that might have been Abenetne disappearing around trees, but nothing challenged them the last league into town.

And this meant she saw it all. Out of the corner of her eye, over there, was the old oak tree – finally fallen, as it had not when a certain adventurous six-year-old had taken refuge in the hollow trunk when a sleeping Priomor had not been so asleep, and hardly receptive to being petted. Further on and to the left was an old meadow, used for grazing until some venerable Fang Shrimp had taken a taste for cows. It was smaller now, but still one big lake of daisies, where Penny had loved to spend spring afternoons, the two of them hiding from Mother and Father. On and on, the landmarks rolled, until the walls of Weatherly rose up out of the forest.

They had expanded the town walls a few times in the last ten years.

The rattled watch captain and Emila exchanged a few tart words while the Mage snuck looks at the other guardsmen and -women – thankfully, no one she knew – or at least, recognized. It was... odd, seeing how they crowded around the walls, pressing close to see the Mages who has come not just to visit, but obviously to handle the strange events over the last few days.

She could remember Penny running out to the family shrimp pond, out of breath and eyes sparkling a brighter blue than usual to say an old man had come to town, not one of the _tourists_ or _gourmets_ but he had a fancy robe and glowing blue eyes, such a stranger!

She hadn't known then, how manipulating magics altered one, not just inside but changing the outside as well. No Mage truly had normal eyes. Not even old Emila, whose gray eyes flickered steel lightning around the edges like strange lashes framing a truly hideous glare. 

The Archmage was exercising that glare on the hapless watch captain, who had clearly done at least as little to impress her as the Mage had. She took advantage of the old Archmage's tirade to look around, pretending to be bored yet anything but.

How was it that there were more buildings than she ever recalled, but the village was clearly smaller than she remembered? She could see the town hall, and the tavern – cheek to jowl as all such pillars of the community should be – the jail and the inn. She could see a few family plots with shrimp ponds surrounding them, but oh, Stormsblood, thankfully she couldn't see the old homestead.

Bad enough the old tree near the inn still stood, taller and broader than ever.

Did trees watered with blood grow better than those that did not, or worse? She _hated_ how it looked like it thrived. 

She hadn't realized she'd drawn closer to it, a casual stroll along the raised walk becoming a hunting stalk until Emila brushed past her, dryly congratulating her on finding the inn, now where was her cursed shrimp curry?

The rest of the evening was a strange blur, muted colors and the murmurs of curious Weatherly villagers crowding around the inn's common room. The Archmage held court with Grim's still oddly uncomfortable chatter emphasizing any points he seemed to agree with now, until the Mage had pulled him from her belt's carry straps and left the two of them to cook up – whatever it was they were debating. She stormed upstairs to her small but luxurious room, sliding off her boots and flopping down onto the bed.

She'd slept on one such as this, once. Some festival, long ago, when Mother and Father had had some sort of business with a trader of some sort. She and Penny had eaten bowls and bowls of soup – curry for Penny, and Priomor Bean Stew for her – until even Penny's teasing about how only weirdos wouldn't like shrimp curry couldn't keep either of them awake. The innkeep – thankfully not the same man running the place now – had carried them upstairs to an old, small room, and one of the softest beds she'd ever been upon. 

Two years later Penny was dead, right outside that very window.

The cook had apparently been the same. The stew had been delicious as ever, and sprawled on a comfortable bed she let the old memory of curling up in comfort wash over her.

In the years after Ridley took her from Weatherly, she'd had nightmares. Not so many in recent years, and most of those had little to do with her past or family. 

She hoped it meant that fighting off waves of cultists and rogue mages and Ethereal beasts could exhaust even the oldest ghosts. 

The Mage was surprised to wake in the soft gray light before dawn, the not so distant ocean tinging the air with salt. Still as if in a dream, she snuck downstairs to an empty common room with Grim sitting almost primly on the table. She latched him to her belt and slipped out the door, hesitating only long enough to snag one of the many little blocks of wood left to dry near the fireplace. 

The family farms were already quietly busy, with folks hustling about tending to shrimp ponds, but no one hailed her as she walked through town. It felt less and less like a dream as she walked along, the distant snuffling of foraging Priomors outside the walls old and terribly familiar.

At the edge of town – where no one prosperous lived – there was a small farm. This side of Weatherly, there was no wall, for it was built right on the cliff's edge and overlooked the sea. The shrimp pools were occupied, but small, and the farmhouse set a ways away from everything Weatherly was clearly abandoned.

Well. Perhaps not such a surprise that Mother and Father hadn't wanted to stay in the town that had stolen two daughters from them.

She slowed her pace, ducking down from time to time to awkwardly pluck daisies that ran rampant through the grass. Strange, how fumbling she was, when her hands were so much stronger and more sure from forming the runes and sigils of magic for years. By the time she reached the far end of the house, dawn was truly breaking, sending her shadow fleeing across the field as she turned from the sea and looked at a small grave marker. She knelt slowly, frowning a little as her hands shook while placing the rough bouquet on the grave.

For a little while, she sat in silence, hands shifting restlessly until she pulled the wooden block from her pouch. _Now_ her movements were sure, deft with practice even though it had been years. She was so caught up in the old ritual of watching with a hint of distant wonder as a Warden Statue started to peek out from the wood while her mind rested, pleasantly blank, that it didn't even occur to her that she hadn't regularly carried her pen knife in years. 

"That is quite the show of control, Mage. I am impressed." Grim sounded subdued, and thankfully not in the least sarcastic. She blinked and looked down, first at him, then at the wood in her hands.

The right one glowed with blue light, the shimmer of magical power forming a crackling blade between her fingers – not enough to sear the wood, but apparently sharp enough carve it. Her smile was rueful and a touch bitter as she shrugged and continued carving. "I didn't realize, actually. Master Ridley always despaired of that habit."

"Carving, or use of power when you don't even realize it?"

Her hands stilled, the statue almost complete. She forced herself to add in the last small details along the cloak and sword, then etched her mark on the base. Slowly, reverently, she placed it beside the daisies.

"Power. I haven't carved in years. Apparently some skills you never lose." And oh, she hated how bitter she sounded, but she couldn't help it. 

Grim seemed to hesitate, then ruffled his cover in a manner she'd taken to thinking of his way of shrugging. "How did it happen?"

Blasted book – so nosy, so ridiculously gentle. After a long moment, she sighed and sat back on her haunches. The sun was warm on her back, and the bright daisies and the pale wood of the new statue almost glowed in the darkness where her body blocked the light. "Do you know – no, you wouldn't. My parents didn't expect another child. They wanted one, but they thought for the longest time I would be their only one. Mother and Penny almost died in the childbirth." She hesitated, then shuddered. "I remember a lot of screaming. We all doted on Penny after that. She was the miracle that happened outside of a fairy tale, real magic in boring, ordinary lives. Hah – would you believe I didn't resent her?"

Grim rather wisely stayed silent, pages rifling a little in the breeze, or perhaps curiosity. "From the first, she was going to be _my_ little sister. I was expected to take care of her, help raise her – by the time she was born, I thought she was mine just as much as Mother and Father's!" She sighed. "We lived out here, on the outskirts, not quite fitting in... and I was even more of a misfit." The Mage gently rocked backwards from her knees to sitting, pulling her legs close to her chest. "Death is cheap and swift out here. Everything in the forest wants to kill you. I thought the trip here – well, before the Gate mess and all – was remarkably quiet." The book snorted; a sound she always considered most bizarre but quite amusing. "When I was young, I was – I had ridiculous ambitions. I wanted to laugh while I could, to enjoy every moment of life – and I never thought of... more."

"More?"

"….That's what we were arguing about. I thought that Penny was – well, not _like_ me, but.... It's complicated. Master Ridley was visiting the town – I guess to look over the Gate. It certainly wasn't because he liked the curry. When Penny found out, she was thrilled. I thought she was excited because he was someone new, and that's always good for some entertainment. It gets boring around here, unless you _like_ beating off Priomors and Shrimp."

She trailed off, remembering how her sister's face had glowed, how she'd been insistent that they go to the inn _right now_ to see if they could run any errands for the funny looking old man with the impressively – scarily! - glowing eyes. "I was... usually angry with – well, everything, often over nothing. This was about a decade ago, and – I was confused."

"As are most at that age."

She snorted. "Well I didn't know that. And then Penny started talking about how she wanted to be a mage, to apprentice with him, or if that failed the next time some merchant came through learning _that_ trade- 'Anything but shrimp farming!' she said."

And that had hurt. She'd never dared dream of something more revolutionary than simply lightening up, not just herself but everyone around her. That it had been _Penny_ who thought this, wanted "more", had wanted to _leave_ , when everyone around her would have bent over backwards to make things better -!

Well. "And I – I said horrible things. I was angry, and it just... kept... escalating. We were screaming at each other, and I could feel something building inside until there was just blue, everywhere."

"Magic. Summoning Halleal's brother."

"Yes." She still rememebered it so clearly, aside from the fact that it was a stuttering series of images in shades of brown – thank all the gods, nothing like normal, real memories. The way the flash of light solidified into an inhuman figure, the top half a handsome man with blazing red eyes and long fangs bared in a horrible scream.

Then his clawed, furred hands had swiped forward, towards both her and Penny. If she'd been standing just a little closer, they both would have died.

Instead the next flash had been of Penny, a stunned look on her face and a fountain of red underneath it.

Then another flash, of Ridley just somehow... _there_ , yelling something at the top of his lungs and slamming his staff against the demon's shoulder. As soon as the demon had turned - 

Another flash of brown-tinted blue. And the demon was still there, but now in messy pieces.

She didn't really remember much else of the day.

"Master Ridley came charging up and just – destroyed Halleal's brother." She swallowed hard, wondering if she should really be feeling quite so horrid about it.

One of the many benefits to being a vessel of arcane energies, some of which inevitably leaked out as light from the eyes, was that if one blinked enough, a few tears evaporated before they made it down the cheeks. She had never quite figured out how Grim could tell what was going on around him, but if he could see through the facade, he at least said nothing. 

They sat in silence for a while, her hand on the old tombstone. She gave it one final pat, trying so hard to let go of the old emotions, then stood.

"Grim...."

"Yes?"

For a moment, she just _looked_. The sun had risen enough that her shadow no longer reached out across the shrimp ponds. It was comfortably, indisputably hers, from the strong shoulders to the familiar lump that was Grim at her hip.

The day before, it had not had that shape. Underneath the flickering leaves, it had wavered through a variety of hallucinatory shapes – now small, short, reminding her so sharply of Penny that only Halleal's verbal barbs had kept her from screaming. Then it had been lean, a tall man reminiscent of Ridley, then slender and beribbioned like an Abatene, then huge and inhuman as a Sphinx. 

It was hugely reassuring that the shadow was now just a rectangle hanging at her hip. 

She reached down and rested a hand lightly on the book's spine. "Yesterday... all that Ethereal magic – I'm glad you're ok." She only had to force a wry grin a little bit. "I did miss your wit."

The book's pages ruffled a little. "Well. Thank you, Mage. I was not looking forward to the possibilities myself."

The grin became a smirk all on its own. "And besides, a witless Grimorie isn't much use to anyone."

He sputtered with a noise like someone rapidly rifling through a book, but she could find laughter underneath the surprise. "Well! I suppose it _would_ take one to know one, after all!"

"Hah! That's the best you can do? Are you sure yesterday didn't have some kind of lingering effects?"

"Only a remarkable lack of patience for you being ridiculous!" The grin settled into a genuine smile as she stretched, rolling her shoulders to be rid of the tenseness that was finally slipping free. She and Grim kept up their banter, almost normal, trying so hard to be normal – they would be, even if it took some time. She patted the grave marker once more before starting back to the inn, chasing the coolness of its shade and letting the stone fall behind; becoming a reminder, no longer a burden.

~end


End file.
